Sand bunkers, or sand traps, are an integral part of almost every golf course. Course designers often use many bunkers of various shapes and sizes to both enhance the aesthetic beauty and increase the level of difficulty of a given course. But sand bunkers also present several challenges to golf course maintenance crews. First, sand often washes down the sides of steep-faced bunkers, sometimes washing completely out of the bunker during heavy rains and leaving the bunker in an unplayable state. New sand must then be added to the bunker and hand raked onto the bunker faces—a time-consuming process for the maintenance crew.
Second, the fine-textured, lightly-colored sand preferred by course designers and players may become discolored by darker-colored underlying soil or contaminated by pebbles and rocks that migrate upward to the playing surface over time. Such contaminants are not only unsightly, but create inconsistent playing conditions and cause damage to golf equipment.
Third, bunker sand can often migrate downward and clog the drainage tiles within the base of the bunker. This will prevent the bunker from draining properly and will often result in standing water within the bunker, forcing the maintenance crew to completely empty the bunker, unclog and renovate the drainage system, and refill the bunker with sand.
Finally, unsightly weeds originating in the native soil can often sprout up through the sand layer in a bunker to compromise both the aesthetics and playability of the hazard. Given these various problems, it is no wonder that the cost of bunker maintenance is typically the largest item in a course maintenance budget.
Prior art bunker maintenance methods and materials include liquid, spray-on products, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,991 to Joyce et al., and erosion control mats formed of natural and synthetic fibers. But these prior art methods fail to address all of the bunker maintenance issues discussed above. For example, prior art erosion control mats, which are used to line unfilled bunkers and then covered by the playing sand, do not prevent the downward migration of sand toward drainage tiles and the upward migration of pebbles and soil to the playing surface. In addition, these mats require a great deal of hand labor to install since they are laid in sections and must be anchored to the native soil with many hand-driven sod staples, especially along the seams between adjacent sections of the mat.
Thus, there exists a need for a labor-saving method and material for preventing erosion and maintaining playability of golf course sand bunkers that will (1) prevent sand from washing out of bunkers during heavy rains, especially on steep slopes, (2) prevent contamination of the playing sand with pebbles and other contaminants from the adjacent and/or underlying native soil, (2) prevent sand from clogging drainage tiles within the bunker, and (4) act as a weed blocker.